


Upside Down, Inside Out

by inbox



Series: GUNISHER [3]
Category: Cable (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Punisher (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dry Orgasm, Light Voyeurism, M/M, Pain, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 04:17:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18731416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/pseuds/inbox
Summary: Most people get their pain receptors turned off, and that's it. Nothing else. They don't - can't - feel anything. Total anaesthetic. But sometimes people's brains are unpredictable, or they're just too accustomed to physically hurting. There's no shutting off the pain so they turn it into something else.





	Upside Down, Inside Out

It _should_ hurt like a son of a bitch. Taking a scattershot blast at close range to the back was one of the most painful experiences of his life, and getting it all slowly picked out piece by piece should be even worse. He's already huffed a Penthrox green whistle from his go bag and knocked the sharpest edges off the biting pain, just enough to get finish up their job and get to his own comfortable apartment without clenching his teeth so hard they'd crack, but Cable's interference in his brain has done something else to the pain entirely. He's turned it upside down, pulled it inside out under a fog of white noise, filling up his skull until there's no room for anything else.

It feels good. It feels unbelievably good.

“Stop wriggling,” Cable says around the tweezers he's holding between his teeth.

Frank's sitting backwards on his dumpy wooden kitchen chair, forearms folded on the  backrest as he submits to Cable’s literal kitchen doctoring. It's not ideal - going to the medical centre down by the waterfront and giving Carter a fat stack to stitch him up is always the first option if he can't patch himself solo - but Cable is calm and experienced in basic field surgery, and that'll do for now.

Each piece of buckshot Cable pulls out feels like a pleasurable pinch. It's he's being gently teased, just enough to make his nerves spark and misfire and send feel-good chemicals oozing through his already sluggish brain.

Cable drops the next piece of buckshot into the empty beer bottle at his elbow. There's two dozen pieces of shot in the bottle already, rattling around loudly.

“Still with me?”

Frank nods once. Better to not say anything ‘cause he's right on the edge of making an involuntary groan when Cable starts digging into his shoulder again.

He's got no idea how long he's been zoning out at his dining table. The white noise in his head and the bouncy refraction of pain into a fuzzy aimless pleasure has lulled him into the kind of restful blankness he rarely gets without swallowing a couple of sleeping pills first.

Cable’s still picking at his shoulder, silently concentrating as he manoeuvres each little pellet out with a combination of tweezers, fingers, and a touch of telekinesis to deal with the tricky business of blood and slippery meat.

It was a bad shot but a lucky hit. Close enough to nail the gap at the outer edge of his body armour, far enough away that his shoulder took the shot mostly subdermally. Not deep enough to pulp muscle and bone. He's taken far worse in the past. Still got a mess of scarring on his thigh from a buckshot blast that shredded his quads into hamburger and took far too long to heal.

“This is my responsibility,” Cable says abruptly. The bottle has a layer of pellets an eighth of an inch thick in the bottom.

 _Nah_ , says Frank. Then, “nah,” out loud ‘cause he's not sure if Cable is listening to him. “Lucky drop. Happens to the best of us.”

“It wasn't.” Cable drops another pellet into the bottle and shakes out his wrist. “I scanned the restaurant first and didn't even see him.”

Frank goes to shrug then thinks better of it, opting to lazily wave his hand in the air instead, twirling loose from the wrist in a universal gesture of _so what?_

Objectively he knows he wouldn't be this easy going about eating a double barrel if he wasn't safe in his own home flying high on painkillers, both pharmaceutical and what Cable’s pumping deep into his head, but--

“You're only being calm about it because you're high and you know where all the guns are,” mutters Cable. “You're gonna have a fit when you sober up.”

He sighs and digs out another pellet with a particularly deep twist of telekinetic pressure from deep under the skin. It should've hurt like nothing else. All Frank feels is syrupy contentment, a warm joy spreading from his shoulder to his brain and pooling in his belly.

“You've got no defences against psychics. He hid himself from me and spotted you a mile away because you're so damn loud, ‘cause I wasn't shielding you mentally. You're lucky that asshole didn't blow your neck clean through.” Cable puts the tweezers down on the little floral plate he's using as a sterile surface. It leaves a smear of blood across the peonies. “ _I'm_ lucky he didn't kill you.”

“But he didn't,” Frank says, gamely attempting at being reasonable. “Now you’ve got something to watch for next time. Can plan to your advantage.”

“There's not going to be a next time.” Cable sounds angry, tense and tight like a wire wound almost to breaking. “It's a liability.”

“You're a goddamn asshole, Summers,” says Frank flatly. He's too tired and out of it to pick the fight that deserves to be picked right then and there.

See, this horseshit, the all knowing act. This is why he doesn't deal with mutants, same as he doesn't tolerate the capes. They're all a buncha arrogant fucks high on their own shit about destiny and duty, treating the average Joe like they're dumb unevolved chumps who can't be trusted to protect themselves.

Frank prides himself on being an average Joe. He might not sprout wings or own a set of magic cutlery, but he's a USMC Scout Sniper with honed aim and he's earned every single goddamn tally he's got by working harder, faster, _smarter_ than every shitbag he's put in the ground over the past decade.

Liability. What a smug arrogant asshole.

Cable primly clears his throat. “You know I can hear you, right?”

“Good. I don't give a shit. Don't treat me like some green recruit ‘cause your intel was bad.”

“Yeah,” says Cable after a long uncomfortable pause. “I guess I deserve that.”

Frank twists in his chair, welcoming the spike of pain that manages to permeate the opiates and Cable's mental fog. He needs it to stay focused, needs to hold onto that jagged ripping feeling so he can properly tell the know-it-all shithead where he can cram it, that _he's_ the one who calls Frank, _he's_ the one who needs him for this kind of messy complicated wetworks, _he's_ the one--

The last thing Frank hears as he passes out is Cable knocking the saucer and tweezers with his elbow, saying his name with what almost sounds like genuine concern.

* * *

 

When he comes to he's on his bed, laid out on the rattiest towels from the back of his bathroom closet. The mattress is sagging where Cable is sitting on the edge, still patiently picking out piece after piece of shot.

The warm white noise in his head picks up strength when he blearily blinks and tries to look over his shoulder. A light pressure on the back of his skull stops him from moving too much, gently pushing until he takes the hint, giving up and giving in.

“You've been down about twenty minutes.”

“Get out of my head. Jesus.”

“Nope. Just a smart guess.” Cable prods at his shoulder. "You're more predictable than you realise, Castle."

The pressure pushing him down turns gentle, phantom fingers cradling the curve of his skull and scratching through his hair. It's nice. Real nice, good enough to take the fight out of him.

He zones out and drifts off, oblivious to anything other than the tender touch on his scalp and the hot molten pleasure misfiring from his shoulder that keeps growing, drop by drop, spreading through his belly and seeping into his bones.

He shifts on the bed, little abortive hitches of his hips into the mattress, so slow that it won't disturb Cable’s hands on his shoulder. He's not hard, not even sure he could get hard, but it's like scratching an itch. It feels real good when he's grinding slow into the threadbare towels, and feels even better when Cable digs into his flesh and his telekinetic touch scratches through his hair.

Couldn't think of the last time someone made him go all boneless like this. Couldn't think of the last time he felt so good.

Cable's hands pause at his shoulder, one breath, two breaths, then resume cleaning him up, methodical and slow. He doesn't say anything, but the shape of him is in the back of Frank's mind, a nebulous form of concern and a touch of embarrassment and, barely there, a dirty shade of shameful interest that Cable smothers down the moment he sees Frank take notice.

“Take it slow, Frank,” Cable says quietly, and pulls out another piece. The beer bottle has a quarter inch of shot in it, sticky enough with setting blood that it doesn't rattle any more.

He can't find it in himself to be embarrassed. For once the snarling dog in his brain is soothed into restfulness, the tense grip of stress on his bones and muscles relaxed and loose. It's an unaccustomed level of hedonism, overwhelming and all-consuming. He floats, untethered by the real world.

Finally Cable sets down his tweezers for the last time, and clears his throat until Frank blinks and stares at him, sleepy and unquestioning.

“This might hurt,” he says apologetically, and mercilessly sluices his entire pulped raw shoulder with surgical spirit from the quart jug Frank keeps under the sink. Only the big warm hand planted square on his back keeps him from jackknifing off the bed.

“Oh _fuck_ ,” he blurts out. He blindly reaches back to grab Cable by the knee, grounding himself as he bucks his hips and groans. The hand on his back doesn't move, just holds him down firm as he groans like a dying man.

All he can feel is searing hot pleasure, so intense that it scrambles his brain and cores out his gut, like a full body orgasm that keeps bouncing and refracting through itself. He's making some stupid noises, can hear himself make the kind of stuttering little breathy gasps he didn't think anyone would make outside of a cheesy porno, but he can't make himself begin to care when he feels like he's coming without coming, seemingly endless, held down by the immovable weight of that hand on his back.

He's still open mouthed and glassy-eyed when Cable packs his shoulder with damp gauze and lays a waterproof dressing over the lot, sealing down the sheer plastic with his palm.

“That'll get you through a few days until you can get to your usual medic,” he says, and slides off the bed, taking his ersatz medical kit with him to be washed up in the bathroom sink.

The touch through Frank’s hair eases off until he grumbles in complaint, an incoherent demand for it back. “Please,” mumbles Frank as an afterthought. “S’good.”

Cable says something indistinct in reply from the bathroom. Frank doesn't hear him.

Cable moves around his apartment while Frank dozes. He fixes himself a cup of instant coffee and makes disapproving noises when looking through his fridge, and pages through the magazines stacked by the sofa. Time passes, but he's got no idea how long. The shadows on the wall move. It's long enough that the pillow leaves creases on his face, long enough that Cable figures out how to work his percolator.

He finally rouses himself when the far side of his mattress dips, blearily watching Cable flick through a fitness magazine while holding Frank's favourite mug.

“I owe you an apology,” he says without looking at him.

Frank licks his lips, trying to bring some moisture to his desert-dry mouth. “No shit.”

Cable sighs into his mug. “I was unfair.”

Frank scowls at him from the corner of his eye. The pillow feels too good to drag himself upright enough to give Cable the stare he really deserves. “Move on,” he says. “You’n I both know that's planning. Take it, learn from it. Move on and use it for next time.”

He rests back against the headboard, chin tipped up and his eyes closed. “You're right,” he says after a bit. “We move on.”

“Said my piece,” says Frank, and shakes his head in reflex as Cable slips into his brain.

The white noise of Cable’s pain blocker obscures him like a figure in the fog, left indistinct around the edges as he inspects Frank's memories of the afternoon. Of breaching the restaurant office, counting down Cable’s body call, thinking _last one down_ as Cable blows the chief bagman of the mutagenic serum dealers across the kitchen with a bolt of hard light. The telepath taking a shot on Frank from behind the office door, two barrels from a break back scattergun that hadn't been maintained in years. Lucky it didn't blow up in the mutant’s face. Lucky it even fired at all.

 _Lucky_ , thinks Frank dryly.

 _For a given matter of luck_ , concedes Cable.

Frank had taken the shooter down in a tidy kill, reeling backwards and finishing him off with his knife. It was clean. It was textbook.

Frank can feel Cable’s disappointment. A brief flash of dissatisfaction, an opportunity missed. He… he chooses not to look into that too deeply. Some things a man should be allowed to keep private, even a man with no shame about digging through Frank’s brain at the drop of a hat.

Cable speeds through the rest of the afternoon. Clearing the restaurant for evidence, taking his proof of completion. Bodysliding straight to Frank’s apartment after picking the address outta his head, getting him cleaned up. He slows slightly at the sight of Frank fidgeting under his touch, brain forced to misfire pain into pleasure, and slows even more at the sight and sound of him panting on the bed, clutching the sheets so tight that they pull up from the corner.

Frank purses his lips. He doesn't know how he feels about that.

Cable flinches in his head, embarrassment rolling off him in waves. _It wasn't intentional,_ he says. _Oath, Frank, that's not… it wasn't intentional._

He fidgets uncomfortably on the bed, magazine abandoned as he passes the coffee mug from hand to hand. His metal fingers make a clicking noise when they wrap around the Friends print on the side. _Most people get their pain receptors turned off, and that's it. Nothing else. They don't - can't - feel anything. Total anaesthetic. But, uh, sometimes people's brains are unpredictable, or they're just too accustomed to physically hurting. There's no shutting off the pain so they turn it into something else._

Frank squints at him. “If you're ‘bout to compare me to that idiot merc friend of yours…”

Cable lets out a large bark of laughter, almost losing his mug entirely. “Wade? God no,” he says, wiping up a trickle of black coffee with his thumb and sucking it clean. "That does neither of you any favours."

Frank looks at his lips ‘round that thick metal thumb. Wonders what it'd be like to take those metal fingers in his mouth, pushing deep into his throat until he gags. Wonders what Cable would look like sucking on Frank’s fingers, looking up at him with those mismatched eyes as he worships every scratch and callus with that pretty mouth.

 _Don't_ , says Cable in his head, ever so slightly shaky ‘round the edges. _Not until you're healed._

“I was going to go out tonight,” Frank says, settling into the pillow. “You know, look online, get a date for a few hours. Deserve it after this past week.”

Cable makes a quiet noise. Not dismissive, not inquisitive. Just a noise.

“Just… shit, I dunno. A fuck, something uncomplicated.”

_Yeah?_

He idly sketches out in his head what he was looking forward to. Someone big, maybe, or at least sturdy. Someone who could take a little rough handling and give it back. He wanted to get fucked. He wanted to get pinned down and slammed onto his back and used hard by someone he didn't have to deal with later.

_Something uncomplicated._

“Yeah.” Frank drums his fingers on the mattress. “Something uncomplicated.”

“Instead you've got a new shoulder decoration and my company.” The smile Cable gives him is lopsided. It doesn't reach his eyes.

“Yeah,” says Frank. He reaches over and pats Cable on the thigh, yawning so wide his jaw clicks. “Stuck with your bullshit complicated ass who gets me shot.”

Cable ignores the barb and picks up his magazine, resting his coffee on his knee. _Take a rest, Frank. I can stick around for an hour or two. Keep you topped up ‘til you can pop some proper painkillers._

Frank stretches out on the towels gingerly, unwilling to disturb his shoulder in case it hurts. Or, strangely, in case it feels too good. He could sleep for a thousand years like this though, Cable squatting quiet in the back of his head, a soft snow of white noise taking away every ache and sprain that's bothered him for too long.

“There's blankets under the sofa,” he says blearily. “‘n a handgun if you need it. Take your boots off if you're gonna stay.”

“I’ll get your van in the morning.” Cable gestures with his magazine and the bedside lamp switches off, leaving the room bathed in the scant late afternoon sunlight that seeps into the city.

“You couldn't fit behind the wheel.”

“Bright Lady, Castle, you're rude.” He doesn't sound annoyed. He sounds amused. “And I thought getting shot might make you nice.”

“Yeah,” mumbles Frank, half asleep already. “Fuckin' weird how everyone thinks that, huh.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a godawful comix blog at [stryfeposting](http://stryfeposting.tumblr.com). Say hi.


End file.
